Archive for August, 2007
The Ingenio inside i-muse
While usability tests of the videoguide at the Educational Silk Museum of Como are going on and continue to give us great results, the value of our entrepreneurial project granted us the admission to the Bando Ingenio, now managed by Regione Lombardia.
It’s a pretty articulate announcement of competition which includes a series of facilities: vouchers to spend for base and advanced courses about different matters, consultancies by tutors and experts qualified to support the beneficiaries of the competition, and also the expenses refund for educational mobility, that is to say for the participation to seminaries and education courses useful to complete the entrepreneurial project.
This last kind of facilitation is very important to us since it will allow us participating to the ICHIM 07 international conference which will take place in Toronto at the end of october, during which we’ll have the chance to present i-muse.
In my opinion there’s no better way to professionally grow up than being able to confront with experienced people and these high profile conferences are the right place to do that. 
Vespatour 2006 Part 12: Arezzo
Posted by Albegor in Vespatour 2006 on August 20, 2007
I was in Cortona in the evening of august 16, the eighth stop of the Vespatour, and while I was talking with a guy I met at the hostel, he recommended me to visit Arezzo, a place I didn’t plan to visit.
When he told me that they filmed my favorite movie there, Life is beautiful by Benigni, and that there were panels marking the places where the scenes were filmed, I had no more hesitations and I spent the following day in that magic town.
The first picture shows Piazza Grande, in which maybe someone will recognize the window of the famous scene “Maria, throw down the keys!”.
The second one is where Guido (Benigni) hit Dora (Braschi) while he was going by bicycle and then he greet her with the words “Buongiorno Principessa!“, while the third one is the park near the Cathedral where I rested for some time to write a postcard, the second of the two ones I sent during the journey, a postcard beginning with those words since it was for a special girl. 
The other 70 pictures of the day I spent in Arezzo are in the twelfth gallery of the Vespatour 2006.
PS: On that postcard I marked the wrong window in Piazza Grande. I did notice that once I was back and watched “Life is beautiful” again…
i-muse Usability Tests on Tafter
It’s a satisfaction watching the result of our work in the hands of people while they visit the Educational Silk museum of Como with i-muse, seeing them at ease and at the end satisfied while they recall the things which impressed them the most!
Most of them actually didn’t expect such a high quality of the guide in all its components: workings, graphics and contents.
Usability tests are going on, they’re allowing us to refine the software and recently I had the chance to explain how they are performed in an article published on the italian online magazine Tafter.
Usability is common sense, as Donald A. Norman says, and from the tests we made so far it seems result we wished to obtain is getting near: when people, at the end of their visit, comment only the contents it means the rest is ok, the i-muse formula works!
Vespatour 2006 Part 11: from Siena to Cortona
Posted by Albegor in Vespatour 2006 on August 5, 2007
On august 3 of the last year, during late afternoon, I left for the Vespatour, a journey which gave me a lot of surprises and which I’m telling on the blog a bit at a time.
With this post I’m actually at half of it…
The Siena’s Palio always fascinated me: a competition so ancient and beloved by the people living there I thought it had something special I didn’t manage to grasp by watching it on TV.
So last year I coordinated the stops of the journey to be able to watch the Palio.
In the afternoon of august 16, after the visit to San Galgano’s Abbey, I arrived in Siena just before the start.
The atmosphere was incredible, the Contradaioli (citizens living in specific areas of the town) thrilled for their jockey and his horse, while tourists assisted almost scared to the course of the big show.
The Contrada della Selva won, just the one where I parked the Vespa, so I immediately left Siena heading towards Cortona as the celebrations began.
Here are the 30 photos of the eleventh gallery of the journey.